We use the fundamental Chinese philosophy text, The Analects of Confucius, as a subject matter to revisit the modern history of transformation of Chinese language. We make the text into a "pinyin" version, a Roman transliteration of Mandarin Chinese, which is a system of meaningless phonetic symbols. We appropriate this familiar yet obscure text, and put it in a didactic and dictative circumstance to perform. During this process, we expect to find a new perspective of thinking beyond the binary narrative of “global and local.” It's neither the nationalist utopia with political and ideological undertones, nor the “Global Art” that Hans Belting proposed.

This project comes from our (generational, cultural) life experience, and expect to find a new perspective of thinking beyond the binary narrative of “global and local.” It's neither the nationalist utopia filled up with political and ideological undertones, nor the “Global Art” that Hans Belting recommended.

From 《论语 (The Analects of Confucius)》 to “lún yǔ” to “L-U-N (space) Y-U”, the culture itself becomes ambiguous in this work. Just like cultural appropriation and cultural imitation around the globe, the text in this work and the way of generating the text confuse both Chinese audience and non-Chinese audience: what is this work? Is it the original text that we regard as the authority, or the combination of letters that made by “others”? Or are they the constant decoding and translating processes among Mandarin, Pinyin and English letters? Or even the ever-changing linguistic signifier that opens up possibilities for the future?

While exploring the verge of cultures, the temptation to create the metanarrative of subject-system has failed. Culture has not been the dead water in the river of history, and we as Chinese are no longer the only legitimate subjects of this text anymore.